Guest Trip Report – Singapore Mileage Run Introduction

One of my friends recently took a trip in Delta One to Singapore. It has been some time since I have been up in the air so I asked him to write about his Delta One experience.

For the next week – check out the posts from Colin, a fellow miles and points enthusiast:

A few weeks ago I did my final big mileage run of the year. I flew MSP-LAX-JFK-DTW-NRT-SIN-NRT-JFK-LAX-MSP.

I had to book it as 3 separate tickets:

A positioning flight (MSP-LAX) as an award ticket, so no miles earned.

One way LAX-JFK because of a broken fare, $160ish;

The rest of it all in for about 650 for a total out of pocket around 800,

This ittinerary netted around 25,000 MQMs.

As I Diamond medallion I was able to pick three choice benefits, and for one I picked a pack of 4 regional upgrades and for the second a pack of 4 global upgrades. These allow you to upgrade any fare (excluding consolidator fares) to DeltaOne provided availability. That last part is the big catch, available seats can take some work to find.

When making the booking I was informed that there were no upgrades available, despite the cabin being almost totally empty, but that there were a lot of open seats still so my upgrade would likely clear eventually. The upgrade certificates require same day ticketed travel, so to correctly use mine I needed to use 3:

2 globals for JFK->SIN and then the return SIN->JFK which also was able to cover JFK->LAX because all that travel was on the same day (thank you time zones). In the end every leg cleared except LAX->JFK.

I will be writing about my experiences on some of the flights over the next few days. The posts will be as follows: